For SJ du Venage, a provincial council member for a right-wing party in South Africas governing coalition, the decision to leave his homeland under a US refugee programme created by President Donald Trump was shaped by longstanding fears.
A former youth leader in the far-right Conservative Party which opposed the end of apartheid he said he grew up fearing what would happen to white South Africans like him if they lost control of the country, and those fears have persisted despite not having experienced tangible mistreatment.
Du Venage, now a 56-year-old FF Plus council member in the Western Cape, is among a group of Afrikaners applying to a programme Trump ordered to help South Africas white minority, whom he claims face racial persecution an assertion the government rejects as a fantasy.
